'Unseen' News and Views
23 December 2015 – Looking back at the year 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summed it up in two words: “breakthrough and horror.”*
At a port in Greece, a young boy and his family join other refugees and migrants trying to board a bus that will transport them to the centre of Athens. UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis
26 December 2015
TWO WEEKS ago, Benedict Anderson died. Or, as we say in Hebrew, “went to his world”.
Uri Avnery
Anderson, an Irishman born in China, educated in England, fluent in several South Asian languages, had a large influence on my intellectual world.
I owe a lot to his most important book, “Imagined Communities”.
EACH OF us has a few books that formed and changed his or her world view.
In my early youth I read Oswald Spengler’s monumental “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” (The Decline of the West). It had a lasting effect on me.
Spengler, now nearly forgotten, believed that all the world’s history consists of a number of “cultures”, which resemble human beings: they are born, mature, grow old and die, within a time span of a thousand years.
**U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Netanyahu, Jerusalem, 23 July 2014 | U.S. Department of State | Wikimedia Commons: “This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.”
UNICEF’s humanitarian work began in the aftermath of World War II — and by the mid 1950’s millions of children were receiving aid. Seventy years later, refugee and migrants are entering Europe at levels not seen since World War II.
– The heavily criticized legal mechanism, known as ISDS, is an important tool for European companies to pressurize developing countries. This year Uganda joins the rank of developing nations asking themselves: “Why have we ever signed this?”
**Regional map of Uganda. | Author: User:(WT-shared) Burmesedays, UN Map of Uganda, UN Map of Tanzania | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
18 December 2015 (TeleSur)* – After 14 years of War on Terror, the West is great at fomenting barbarism and creating failed states.
Many have begun to refer to the Islamic State group as Daesh. | Photo: andaluciainformacion.es | Source: TeleSur
For the last several years, people around the world have asked, “Where did ISIS come from?” Explanations vary, but largely focus on geopolitical (U.S. hegemony), religious (Sunni-Shia), ideological (Wahhabism) or ecological (climate refugees) origins.
Many commentators and even former military officials correctly suggest that the war in Iraq is primarily responsible for unleashing the forces we now know as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, etc. Here, hopefully I can add some useful reflections and anecdotes.
Geneva, December 2015 – Migrant workers account for 150.3 million of the world’s approximately 232 million international migrants, according to a new study by the International Labour Organization (ILO).*
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Photo source: ILO
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The report, ILO Global Estimates on Migrant Workers , shows migrant workers account for 72.7 per cent of the 206.6 million working age migrant population (15 years and over).
The majority – 83.7 million – are men, with 66.6 million women migrant workers.
Some 70 per cent of the over 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon now live below the Lebanese extreme poverty line, a big rise over 2014, and food insecurity is mounting, the UN on 23 December 2015 reported, calling for greater access to the domestic labour market to mitigate the crisis.
A young Syrian girl sits on a broken chair by her tent in Faida 3 camp, an informal tented settlement for Syria refugees in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi
“Each day represents a monumental struggle to meet the most basic needs,” the 2015 UN Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon said, noting that the rise in those below the $3.84-per-day poverty line rise represented “a striking increase” from 49 per cent in 2014.
As the Central African Republic (CAR) prepares for general elections, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said that her Office will record any instance of violence and that anyone committing atrocity crimes will be held accountable.
Voters in the PK5 area of the capital Bangui after casting ballots in the Central African Republic referendum from 13 to 14 December 2015 on a new draft constitution for the country. UN Photo/Nektarios Markogiannis
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 